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Late Sunday Notes

By Al Yellon

All of this is from today's afternoon notes column from the Cubs website.

Look down at the previous post, where I noted that Brian Boehringer had pitched half a season in San Francisco for Dusty Baker.

Turns out that's exactly why he was signed:

"I had Bo," Baker said of the right-hander, who did not pitch last season because of personal reasons. "I know Bo has good stuff, especially if he's healthy. He said his arm is good. The guy knows how to pitch. He can throw every day, he'll never complain, you won't know he's around. He was a pleasure to have on my team. He's looking for an opportunity, and that's what will give him an opportunity."

Boehringer, who pitched in 29 games for Baker and the San Francisco Giants in 2001, contacted Baker.

"My agent wasn't getting anything done," Boehringer said. "[Dusty] was the person I felt I knew the best who was managing. I had to call a couple people for his phone number and they sent a scout out to look at me and the rest is history."

29 games. Great. Oh, and get this, Dusty likes him because he reads books:

"He's the only player I've ever had who checks books out of my library in my office," Baker said. "This guy can read a book in about 15 minutes I think. He checks them out. He takes the jacket off, leaves the jacket, then puts it back on when he comes back."

Great, again. And why bother when just above these notes, it says:

The Cubs have an overload of relief pitchers in camp.

"It's a great problem to have [too many]," Baker said. "You can never have enough quality arms. You never know when somebody else might want one of your surplus arms. That could help your team out. Everybody is looking for good arms."

And that includes a 37-year-old pitcher out of baseball for a year, who hasn't thrown well since 2002? Where is there going to be enough work for all these relievers?

Remember a couple of weeks ago, when I tried to figure out what the new capacity of Wrigley Field would be?

The Cubs posted a new number in today's article, too: 41,118. This is based on the 39,538 figure that's consistent with what they had on their website prior to the expansion. But that's only 1,580 extra seats, not 1,800 as they had originally claimed.

Finally, the website notes say the Cubs report 600,000 single-game tickets sold on Friday. If true, this would break the Cub (and major league) record of 572,000 first-day tickets sold set in 2004.

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